Beertopia: JDub’s Brewing Company’s Up Top! IPA

This column reviews a beer based on aroma, appearance, taste, and palate (mouthfeel). At the end of each review, we score the beer based on a five-star system (one star meaning you will likely regret ever drinking such a horrible concoction, five stars meaning it’s your new favorite beer, with two, three, and four stars falling somewhere in between). If any of you wonderful brewers would like to send me beer to review, I would happily accept your offer.

There are a number of reasons that eating local has become increasingly popular. Eating local produces fewer carbon emissions, provides you with more nutrition, supports your local economy, and preserves genetic diversity. For all those reasons (and even some that I didn’t list), you should eat locally grown and produced food if you aren’t already.

But even if you didn’t care about any of that stuff, there’s one big reason you should still eat local: It tastes better. And who doesn’t want higher quality food? Communists. You’re not a communist are you?

OK, this is great and all, but what the hell does this have to do with beer? Excellent question, comrade. Many of the same benefits that come from eating local extend to drinking local, too. And that’s especially true when it comes to IPAs — you want to drink them as fresh as possible.

So it was with this in mind that I decided to try JDub’s Brewing Company’s Up Top! IPA. I hadn’t ever come across or even heard of the Sarasota brewery before spotting this beer a week ago. I didn’t have particularly high expectations but, hey, drink local and all.

Up Top! pours a nice copper color and has a pleasant tropical fruit aroma with a hint of pine. The taste is what you’d expect from the nose and has a really nice bitter punch from the falconer’s flight hops. Although the description on JDub’s website says that the malt character balances out the hops, it didn’t particularly stand out to me. While this might be a negative for some, it’s actually a plus for me, as I prefer a more west-coast style IPA. It’s medium-bodied, well-carbonated, and has a nice dry finish that leaves you looking forward to the next sip.

Overall, this is a very good beer. I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t surprised by the quality of this one. I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that I had only bought one. Learn from my mistakes: Buy more than one and buy it often, especially if you’re a local.